The Beatles in India, 50 years on

Up in the Himalayan foothills, Rishikesh became world-famous thanks to the Beatles’ stay - Himanshu Khagta

It’s not always this quiet at the Last Chance Café. Just up the road, after all, is the Beatles Ashram where, 50 years ago this month, the group famously came to explore transcendental meditation with the Maharishi.

The café has just two other customers – a pair of Western seekers-after-truth more than old enough to remember the Beatles’ visit. They’re sipping soup and doggedly seeking that truth.

“When the snake recognises the rope, you will never see the snake again,” says the man on the left, rolling what may or may not be tobacco. The man on the right, resplendent in a maroon turban, nods slowly.

“Illusion is like a black blanket on your head,” the snake man continues. “The only way is to accept it nicely and sit on it. Then the black blanket becomes a lotus.” He pauses. “Remember – no matter where you go, there you are.” He finishes his rolling and lights up. Smoke drifts over us. It’s not tobacco.

My wife and I, without turbans or black blankets, are in Rishikesh, the north Indian town on the Ganges often called “the yoga capital of the world”. Up in the Himalayan foothills, it became world-famous thanks to the Beatles’ stay and (with no undue rush) it’s now making the most of its celebrity connection. The focus is an intriguingly alternative tourist attraction – the remains of the ashram run by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a man with a winning line in charisma and a seriously straggling beard.

Rishikesh is called the "yoga capital of the world"Credit: getty

The band had met him the previous August after a lecture he gave in London. He invited them to his 14-acre retreat and, on a quest for spiritual enlightenment and a bit of peace and quiet, they accepted. John Lennon and George Harrison arrived in India on Feb 15, with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr following four days later. Ringo, who brought a suitcase packed with cans of baked beans as a safeguard against spicy curry, seems to have been the least impressed by what they found.

The Maharishi lived in an impressive house with its own helicopter pad, but the chalets in which the group were billeted were, said Ringo, just like Butlin’s. He left after 11 days. The others stayed on for up to two months, meditating, writing songs – reputedly as many as 48, including some for Abbey Road and the White Album – and eventually becoming disillusioned with the Maharishi.

John, George and Mike LoveCredit: Bettmann

The visit – which also attracted singers Donovan and the Beach Boys’ Mike Love and the actress Mia Farrow – became a predictable media circus. Pathé News sent out its cameras and filed a wry report on the Maharishi’s “top-of-the-pop pupils”. Sporting stubble and dressed in Indian clothes, they were filmed walking round the ashram grounds, occasionally waving to the journalists.

The Maharishi, who died in 2008, was described in Pathé’s clipped voice-over as “the man who through transcendental meditation is currently bringing peace of mind to the Beatles”. He apparently told reporters “that his brand of peace of mind could only be truly appreciated by intelligent men of the world with rewarding activities and high incomes”.

Paul applies face paintCredit: Bettmann

Back at the Last Chance Café – so-called because it’s your last chance to get a cup of coffee before reaching the ashram – the legends live on. “Many people come here only for the Beatles,” says Manjit Singh, the café’s owner, who runs an attached guesthouse with rooms at around £2 a night (“Mostly Europeans stay; mostly young”). To cater for these Flower Power pilgrims, the long-abandoned ashram site was cleared of much of its undergrowth two years ago and opened to the paying public. It pulled in some 10,000 visitors over its first year and is due to host a three-day Beatles festival next month (from March 5).

Paul Saltzman on the 11 days he spent meditating with The Beatles in Rishikesh

“Maybe some of the Indian guests here are young couples who want a peaceful time,” says Alpesh Gohel, our guide, as he leads us past a government-run cow shelter to the ashram entrance. Inside we duly see bashful, young couples holding hands.

Near the entrance is a cluster of what look like stone igloos. These are the “caves” or “pods”, where ashram devotees meditated. One is called “The Beatles Cave”, in the belief that the group used it. Its much-photographed walls are painted with psychedelic graffiti and song lyrics. The caves are well-preserved. Other buildings on the site, however, are in dank decline, their concrete black and crumbling as a half-century of monsoons has taken its toll. Some are overgrown by peepul, banyan and fig trees, like a lost city in the jungle, an Indian answer to Cambodia’s Angkor Wat.

The crumbling ashram is being lost to the jungleCredit: GETTY

Many have recently painted murals of the group and a whole catalogue of their song titles – Yesterday, In My Life, I Am the Walrus, Penny Lane, I Wanna Hold Your Hand. In the former meditation hall, a young Western woman sits strumming a ukulele and quietly singing Here Comes the Sun.

Murals and song lyrics have been added to the ruinsCredit: GETTY

The Maharishi’s house is sadly decayed but two Indian college students in their early 20s are still entranced. “Oh, I love the Beatles’ music,” says Nitish Jalota. “If you look at my playlists, it’s all old music from the Sixties and Seventies – Beatles, Pink Floyd, Nirvana.” What does his friend, Hardik Karelia, like about the Beatles? “Their philosophy, their thinking, the way they articulated things.”

From an older generation, Victor H Kazanjian Jnr from San Francisco is staying at another Rishikesh ashram with his wife and son. “It’s exhilarating both to be in the place where transcendental meditation started and where the Beatles came and wrote so many songs,” he says. “It’s both lovely and a bit sad that it’s been abandoned.”

Building on the success of the reopened ashram, there are plans to set up a Beatles museum in Rishikesh. “Peace and love is a good marketing strategy,” says Alpesh as we head into the town centre.

Rishikesh today bustles with WesternersCredit: getty

I was last here nearly 20 years ago. I found a quiet, laid-back town scattered with young and generally miserable-looking Western backpackers who might just risk a smile if you smiled at them first. Not any more. Rishikesh now bustles with Westerners, many smiling, and offers a bumper post-Nirvana package of every alternative outlook, every New Age therapy. Here are the Baba Massage Centre, the Divine Ganga Cottage and the Pure Soul Café. Here are the Healing Hands of Reiki School and Unisex Body and Mind Massage. Here are Osho Women Vision, and Vedic Gems and Handicrafts. If you’re looking for Tibetan Sound Healing Crystals, look no further.

In the Madras Café, opened the year before the Beatles arrived, you can still order banana pancakes, totemic food of the fully-paid-up backpacker. Most younger diners are too preoccupied with their tablets and smart phones to talk to each other. A blonde woman walks past with a T-shirt proclaiming “Living in Dreamland”.

“Rishikesh has changed in the past few years,” says Gaurav Agarwal, the café’s owner. “It has developed a lot; the peace that people used to come for isn’t here now.”

For a start, the town now has a new high-energy identity, remote from the world of ashrams and the pilgrimages to the holy city of Haridwar that are often coupled with it on visits. It’s a major centre for “adventure tourism”, attracting 300,000 visitors a year for white-water rafting, zip-lining, bungee jumping, kayaking and paintballing. Enjoy some “splash adventures”; indulge in “river fun”.

Adventurer tourists have joined the truth seekersCredit: UNIVERSALIMAGESGROUP

Venture out of the town centre, however, to the plunging valleys and forested mountains and it’s not hard to recapture the sense of remoteness that brought people here in the first place. We feel it thanks to a three-night stay 20 miles away at Raga on the Ganges, a charming garden village of secluded rooms and cottages on a hillside overlooking the river: a wonderful place to unwind.

At a glance | On tour with the Beatles

In the town centre itself, 10 large ashrams (some with more than 1,000 rooms) and 20 smaller ones are havens of peace. At the long-established Sivananda Ashram, saffron-robed monks sit on the floor reciting the “Ramayana”, the epic Hindu poem. In the assembly hall, a senior monk in a red woolly hat is giving a talk to devotees. “May there be no discord between us,” he says. “Peace. Peace. Peace.”

Outside, a pillar displays “instructions” few would disagree with: “Speak the truth at any cost; speak a little, sweetly… Reduce your wants; lead a happy contented life… Adhere to the motto ‘Simple living and high thinking’.”

Alpesh (his name, he tells us, means “The God of Small Things”) has nothing but praise. “This ashram is less into commercialism and more into promoting spirituality,” he says. “It’s a leading example of good ashramry – traditional as well as modern, religious as well as social.”

The surrounding landscapes are spectacularCredit: GETTY

In the sunlit beauty of a midwinter afternoon, we take a ferry across the Ganges, drifting past caves where sadhus – holy men – once lived. A young man offers to clean out my ears; another to henna my hands. At sunset at the Parmarth Niketan Ashram, we watch the aarti ceremony, a daily ritual of prayers sung to harmonium accompaniment that climaxes with spectators floating flickering “light boats” on the river. Pilgrims rinse their hands in the water and sprinkle it over their heads.

Steve McCurry's India

Back at the Last Chance Café, the seekers-after-truth are still seeking. “I live in a big space; there is endless space but no people,” says one, shaking his head. The other smiles: “Don’t be a mosquito. You don’t need the blood of others…”

They look set for a hard day’s night.

How to get there

Cox & Kings (020 3642 0861; coxandkings.co.uk) has an eight-night tour from £1,965 per person, including three nights at Raga on the Ganges (for Rishikesh). The price also includes international and domestic flights, transfers, three nights at the Taj Mahal Hotel (Delhi) and two nights at Haveli Hari Ganga (Haridwar). Breakfast included.

Stephen McClarence stayed at the Taj Mahal Hotel (tajhotels.com) which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. It has luxurious rooms, excellent restaurants and friendly, efficient staff. Doubles, including breakfast, from 32,000 Indian rupees (£354).

Beatles in India, a two-year exhibition about the group’s Rishikesh visit, opens on Feb 16 at Liverpool’s The Beatles Story (0151 709 1963; beatlesstory.com). It includes a sitar lent by Ravi Shankar, George Harrison’s mentor, and evocative photographs by Paul Saltzman. Admission £15.95 with concessions.